Casey Cohenmeyer sneakily snags sourdough at the Swift Sourdough Seekers Challenge

From Casey Cohenmeyer:

We are all looking for some entertainment in this weird world we are living in right now. Enter the The Swift Sourdough Seekers. Rally Cycling pro and sourdough ninja Robin Carpenter came up with a rad game for us. He picks a Strava segment or two and we all go out and try to rip our legs off to take this week’s top step. He awards a loaf for the first place of the week man and woman, and to encourage participation, he also awards the tenth place guy and girl.

So if you can’t be fast, be sneaky.

I did my research. We had two segments, one was a very short, very steep little evil thing that my best ever time in the past was over 2 min. The other was a very familiar rolling sector that I had done on a fast group ride, sucking wheel so hard at full on IMMA DIE race pace with a PR of 6:09 at 186W. The current leader was 6:04, so trying for that was out. I looked at the board and saw a gap between #9 and the current #10. I estimated that 170-175W would do it, but not over do-it. So I did a targeted effort, checking my pace only the way. I know that road very well so I could check my time at the half and 3/4 way points. I came up with a 7:37 at 174W. Behind number nine and 13 seconds ahead of #10. Science, yo.

Then the short segment, I knew the board wasn’t full yet and just rolled the dice and went as hard as I could at that moment, which was pretty crap, 270W for 1:56 and good enough for a glorious last place. Hooyah. Turns out only seven women did the short segment, so I could have walked up it, but where’s the gamesmanship in that? Waiting til the last day of the challenge was partly because I had to work the entire week, but yeah, it was mostly just straight up sneaky. I got all geeky with the power numbers to get that bread.

Several days later Robin hand delivered by bike the most beautiful loaf of sourdough I’ve ever seen and it tasted even better than it looked. Thanks Robin for hosting this challenge. We all need stuff like this right now.

Any additional advice you'd like to share?
Do whatever you have to do to get that bread. Failure is not an option. Actually, failure is always a great option.